Light

All together we go down by the fields where tranquil corn is growing, by the gardens and orchards where homely trees are making ready their offerings—the scented blossom which lends, the fruit which gives itself. They form an immense plain, sloping and darkling, with brown undulations under the blue which now alone is becoming green. A little girl, who has come from the spring, puts down her bucket and stands at the roadside like a post, looking with all her eyes. She looks at the marching multitude with beaming curiosity. Her littleness embraces that immensity, because it is all a part of Order. A peasant who has stuck to his work in spite of the festival and is bent over the deep shadows of his field, raises himself from the earth which is so like him, and turns towards the golden sun the shining monstrance of his face.

* * * * * *

But what is this—this sort of madman, who stands in the middle of the road and looks as if, all by himself, he would bar the crowd's passage? We recognize Brisbille, swaying tipsily in the twilight. There is an eddy and a muttering in the flow.

"D'you want to know where all that's leading you?" he roars, and nothing more can be heard but his voice. "It's leading you to hell! It's the old rotten society, with the profiteering of all them that can, and the stupidity of the rest! To hell, I tell you! To-morrow look out for yourselves! To-morrow!"

A woman's voice cries from out of the shadows, in a sort of scuffle, "Be quiet, wicked man! You've no right to frighten folks!"

But the drunkard continues to shout full-throated, "To-morrow! To-morrow! D'you think things will always go on like that? You're fit for killing! To hell!"

Some people are impressed and disappear into the evening. Those who are marking time around the obscure fanatic are growling, "He's not only bad, he's mad, the dirty beast!"

"It's disgraceful," says the young curate.

Brisbille goes up to him. "You tell me, then, you, what'll happen very soon—Jesuit, puppet, land-shark! We know you, you and your filthy, poisonous trade!"

"Say that again!"

It was I who said that. Leaving Marie's arm instinctively I sprang forward and planted myself before the sinister person. After the horrified murmur which followed the insult, a great silence had fallen on the scene.

Astounded, and his face suddenly filling with fear, Brisbille stumbles and beats a retreat.

The crowd regains confidence, and laughs, and congratulates me, and reviles the back of the man who is sinking in the stream.

"You were fine!" Marie said to me when I took her arm again, slightly trembling.

I returned home elated by my energetic act, still all of a tremor, proud and happy. I have obeyed the prompting of my blood. It was the great ancestral instinct which made me clench my fists and throw myself bodily, like a weapon, upon the enemy of all.

After dinner, naturally, I went to the military tattoo, at which, by an unpardonable indifference, I have not regularly been present, although these patriotic demonstrations have been organized by Monsieur Joseph Bonéas and his League of Avengers. A long-drawn shudder, shrill and sonorous, took flight through the main streets, filling the spectators and especially the young folks, with enthusiasm for the great and glorious deeds of the future. And Pétrolus, in the front row of the crowd, was striding along in the crimson glow of the fairy-lamps—clad in a visionary uniform of red.

I remember that I talked a great deal that evening in our quarter, and then in the house. Our quarter is something like all towns, something like all country-sides, something like it is everywhere—it is a foreshortened picture of all societies in the old universe, as my life is a picture of life.

CHAPTER IX

THE STORM

"There's going to be war," said Benoît, on our doorsteps in July.

"No," said Crillon, who was there, too, "I know well enough there'll be war some day, seeing there's always been war after war since the world was a world, and therefore there'll be another; but just now—at once—a big job like that? Nonsense! It's not true. No."

Some days went by, tranquilly, as days do. Then the great story reappeared, increased and branched out in all directions. Austria, Serbia, the ultimatum, Russia. The notion of war was soon everywhere. You could see it distracting men and slackening their pace in the going and coming of work. One divined it behind the doors and windows of the houses.

One Saturday evening, when Marie and I—like most of the French—did not know what to think, and talked emptily, we heard the town crier, who performs in our quarter, as in the villages.

"Ah!" she said.

We went out and saw in the distance the back of the man who was tapping a drum. His smock was ballooned. He seemed pushed aslant by the wind, stiffening himself in the summer twilight to sound his muffled roll. Although we could not see him well and scarcely heard him, his progress through the street had something grand about it.

Some people grouped in a corner said to us, "The mobilization."

No other word left their lips. I went from group to group to form an opinion, but people drew back with sealed faces, or mechanically raised their arms heavenwards. And we knew no better what to think now that we were at last informed.

We went back into the court, the passage, the room, and then I said to Marie, "I go on the ninth day—a week, day after to-morrow—to my depot at Motteville."

She looked at me, as though doubtful.

I took my military pay book from the wardrobe and opened it on the table. Leaning against each other, we looked chastely at the red page where the day of my joining was written, and we spelled it all out as if we were learning to read.

Next day and the following days everybody went headlong to meet the newspapers. We read in them—and under their different titles they were then all alike—that a great and unanimous upspringing was electrifying France, and the little crowd that we were felt itself also caught by the rush of enthusiasm and resolution. We looked at each other with shining eyes of approval. I, too, I heard myself cry, "At last!" All our patriotism rose to the surface.

Our quarter grew fevered. We made speeches, we proclaimed the moral verities—or explained them. The echoes of vast or petty news went by in us. In the streets, the garrison officers walked, grown taller, disclosed. It was announced that Major de Trancheaux had rejoined, in spite of his years, and that the German armies had attacked us in three places at once. We cursed the Kaiser and rejoiced in his imminent chastisement. In the middle of it all France appeared personified, and we reflected on her great life, now suddenly and nakedly exposed.

"It was easy to foresee this war, eh?" said Crillon.

Monsieur Joseph Bonéas summarized the world-drama. We were all pacific to the point of stupidity—little saints, in fact. No one in France spoke any longer of revenge, nobody wished it, nobody thought of as much as getting ready for war. We had all of us in our hearts only dreams of universal happiness and progress, the while Germany secretly prepared everything for hurling herself on us. "But," he added, he also carried away, "she'll get it in the neck, and that's all about it!"

The desire for glory was making its way, and one cloudily imagines Napoleon reborn.

In these days, only the mornings and evenings returned as usual, everything else was upside down, and seemed temporary. The workers moved and talked in a desert of idleness, and one saw invisible changes in the scenery of our valley and the cavity of our sky.

We saw the Cuirassiers of the garrison go away in the evening. The massive platoons of young-faced horsemen, whose solemn obstruction heavily hammered the stones of the street, were separated by horses loaded with bales of forage, by regimental wagons and baggage-carts, which rattled unendingly. We formed a hedgerow along the twilight causeways and watched them all disappear. Suddenly we cheered them. The thrill that went through horses and men straightened them up and they went away bigger—as if they were coming back!

"It's magnificent, how warlike we are in France!" said fevered Marie, squeezing my arm with all her might.

The departures, of individuals or groups, multiplied. A sort of methodical and inevitable tree-blazing—conducted sometimes by the police—ransacked the population and thinned it from day to day around the women.

Increasing hurly-burly was everywhere—all the complicated measures so prudently foreseen and so interdependent; the new posters on top of the old ones, the requisitioning of animals and places, the committees and the allowances, the booming and momentous gales of motor-cars filled with officers and aristocratic nurses—so many lives turned inside out and habits cut in two. But hope bedazzled all anxieties and stopped up the gaps for the moment. And we admired the beauty of military orderliness and France's preparation.

Sometimes, at windows or street-corners, there were apparitions—people covered with new uniforms. We had known them in vain, and did not know them at first. Count d'Orchamp, lieutenant in the Active Reserves, and Dr. Bardoux, town-major, displaying the cross of the Legion of Honor, found themselves surrounded by respectful astonishment. Adjutant Marcassin rose suddenly to the eyes as though he had come out of the earth; Marcassin, brand-new, rigid, in blue and red, with his gold stripe. One saw him afar, fascinating the groups of urchins who a week ago threw stones at him.

"The old lot—the little ones, and the middling ones and the big ones—all getting new clothes!" says a triumphant woman of the people.

Another said it was the coming of a new reign.

* * * * * *

From the Friday onwards I was engrossed by my own departure. It was that day that we went to buy boots. We admired the beautiful arrangement of the Cinema Hall as a Red Cross hospital.

"They've thought of everything!" said Marie, examining the collection of beds, furniture, and costly chests, rich and perfected material, all arranged with delighted and very French animation by a team of attendants who were under the orders of young Varennes, a pretty hospital sergeant, and Monsieur Lucien Gozlan, superintendent officer.

A center of life had created itself around the hospital. An open air buffet had been set up in a twinkling. Apolline came there—since the confusion of the mobilization all days were Sundays for her—to provide herself with nips. We saw her hobbling along broadwise, hugging her half-pint measure in her short turtle-like arms, the carrot slices of her cheek-bones reddening as she already staggered with hope.

On our way back, as we passed in front of Fontan's café, we caught a glimpse of Fontan himself, assiduous, and his face lubricated with a smile. Around him they were singing the Marseillaise in the smoke. He had increased his staff, and he himself was making himself two, serving and serving. His business was growing by the fatality of things.

When we got back to our street, it was deserted, as of yore. The faraway flutterings of the Marseillaise were dying. We heard Brisbille, drunk, hammering with all his might on his anvil. The same old shadows and the same lights were taking their places in the houses. It seemed that ordinary life was coming back as it had been into our corner after six days of supernatural disturbance, and that the past was already stronger than the present.

Before mounting our steps we saw, crouching in front of his shop door by the light of a lamp that was hooded by whirling mosquitoes, the mass of Crillon, who was striving to attach to a cudgel a flap for the crushing of flies. Bent upon his work, his gaping mouth let hang the half of a globular and shining tongue. Seeing us with our parcels, he threw down his tackle, roared a sigh, and said, "That wood! It's touchwood, yes. A butter-wire's the only thing for cutting that!"

He stood up, discouraged; then changing his idea, and lighted from below by his lamp so that he flamed in the evening, he extended his tawny-edged arm and struck me on the shoulder. "We said war, war, all along. Very well, we've got war, haven't we?"

In our room I said to Marie, "Only three days left."

Marie came and went and talked continually round me, all the time sewing zinc buttons onto the new pouch, stiff with its dressing. She seemed to be making an effort to divert me. She had on a blue blouse, well-worn and soft, half open at the neck. Her place was a great one in that gray room.

She asked me if I should be a long time away, and then, as whenever she put that question she went on, "Of course, you don't a bit know." She regretted that I was only a private like everybody. She hoped it would be over long before the winter.

I did not speak. I saw that she was looking at me secretly, and she surrounded me pell-mell with the news she had picked up. "D'you know, the curate has gone as a private, no more nor less, like all the clergy. And Monsieur the Marquis, who's a year past the age already, has written to the Minister of War to put himself at his disposition, and the Minister has sent a courier to thank him." She finished wrapping up and tying some toilet items and also some provisions, as if for a journey. "All your bits of things are there. You'll be absolutely short of nothing, you see."

Then she sat down and sighed. "Ah," she said, "war, after all, it's more terrible than one imagines."

She seemed to be having tragic presentiments. Her face was paler than usual; the normal lassitude of her features was full of gentleness; her eyelids were rosy as roses. Then she smiled weakly and said, "There are some young men of eighteen who've enlisted, but only for the duration of the war. They've done right; that'll be useful to them all ways later in life."

* * * * * *

On Monday we hung about the house till four o'clock, when I left it to go to the Town Hall, and then to the station.

At the Town Hall a group of men, like myself, were stamping about. They were loaded with parcels in string; new boots hung from their shoulders. I went up to mix with my new companions. Tudor was topped by an artilleryman's cap. Monsieur Mielvaque was bustling about, embarrassed—exactly as at the factory—by the papers he held in his hand; and he had exchanged his eyeglasses for spectacles, which stood for the beginning of his uniform. Every man talked about himself, and gave details concerning his regiment, his depot, and some personal peculiarity.

"I'm staying," says the adjutant master-at-arms, who rises impeccably in his active service uniform, amid the bustle and the neutral-tinted groups; "I'm not going. I'm the owner of my rank, and they haven't got the right to send me to join the army."

We waited long, and some hours went by. A rumor went round that we should not go till the next day. But suddenly there was silence, a stiffening up, and a military salute all round. The door had just opened to admit Major de Trancheaux.

The women drew aside. A civilian who was on the lookout for him went up, hat in hand, and spoke to him in undertones.

"But, my friend," cried the Major, quitting the importunate with a quite military abruptness, "it's not worth while. In two months the war will be over!"

He came up to us. He was wearing a white band on his cap.

"He's in command at the station," they say.

He gave us a patriotic address, brief and spirited. He spoke of the great revenge so long awaited by French hearts, assured us that we should all be proud, later, to have lived in those hours, thrilled us all, and added, "Come, say good-by to your folks. No more women now. And let's be off, for I'm going with you as far as the station."

A last confused scrimmage—with moist sounds of kisses and litanies of advice—closed up in the great public hall.

When I had embraced Marie I joined these who were falling in near the road. We went off in files of four. All the causeways were garnished with people, because of us; and at that moment I felt a lofty emotion and a real thrill of glory.

At the corner of a street I saw Crillon and Marie, who had run on ahead to take their stand on our route. They waved to me.

"Now, keep your peckers up, boys! You're not dead yet, eh!" Crillon called to us.

Marie was looking at me and could not speak.

"In step! One-two!" cried Adjutant Marcassin, striding along the detachment.

We crossed our quarter as the day declined over it. The countryman who was walking beside me shook his head and in the dusky immensity among the world of things we were leaving, with big regular steps, fused into one single step, he scattered wondering words. "Frenzy, it is," he murmured. "I haven't had time to understand it yet. And yet, you know, there are some that say, I understand; well, I'm telling you, that's not possible."

The station—but we do not stop. They have opened before us the long yellow barrier which is never opened. They make us cross the labyrinth of hazy rails, and crowd us along a dark, covered platform between iron pillars.

And there, suddenly, we see that we are alone.

* * * * * *

The town—and life—are yonder, beyond that dismal plain of rails, paths, low buildings and mists which surrounds us to the end of sight. A chilliness is edging in along with twilight, and falling on our perspiration and our enthusiasm. We fidget and wait. It goes gray, and then black. The night comes to imprison us in its infinite narrowness. We shiver and can see nothing more. With difficulty I can make out, along our trampled platform, a dark flock, the buzz of voices, the smell of tobacco. Here and there a match flame or the red point of a cigarette makes some face phosphorescent. And we wait, unoccupied, and weary of waiting, until we sit down, close-pressed against each other, in the dark and the desert.

Some hours later Adjutant Marcassin comes forward, a lantern in his hand, and in a strident voice calls the roll. Then he goes away, and we begin again to wait.

At ten o'clock, after several false alarms, the right train is announced. It comes up, distending as it comes, black and red. It is already crowded, and it screams. It stops, and turns the platform into a street. We climb up and put ourselves away—not without glimpses, by the light of lanterns moving here and there, of some chalk sketches on the carriages—heads of pigs in spiked helmets, and the inscription, "To Berlin!"—the only things which slightly indicate where we are going.

The train sets off. We who have just got in crowd to the windows and try to look outside, towards the level crossing where, perhaps, the people in whom we live are still watching for us; but the eye can no longer pick up anything but a vague stirring, shaded with crayon and jumbled with nature. We are blind and we fall back each to his place. When we are enveloped in the iron-hammered rumble of advance, we fix up our luggage, arrange ourselves for the night, smoke, drink and talk. Badly lighted and opaque with fumes, the compartment might be a corner of a tavern that has been caught up and swept away into the unknown.

Some conversation mixes its rumble with that of the train. My neighbors talk about crops and sunshine and rain. Others, scoffers and Parisians, speak of popular people and principally of music-hall singers. Others sleep, lying somehow or other on the wood. Their open mouths make murmur, and the oscillation jerks them without tearing them from their torpor. I go over in my thoughts the details of the last day, and even my memories of times gone by when there was nothing going on.

* * * * * *

We traveled all night. At long intervals some one would let a window drop at a station; a damp and cavernous breath would penetrate the overdone atmosphere of the carriage. We saw darkness and some porter's lantern dancing in the abyss of night.

Several times we made very long halts—to let the trains of regular troops go by. In one station where our train stood for hours, we saw several of them go roaring by in succession. Their speed blurred the partitions between the windows and the huge vertebrae of the coaches, seeming to blend together the soldiers huddled there; and the glance which plunged into the train's interior descried, in its feeble and whirling illumination, a long, continuous and tremulous chain, clad in blue and red. Several times on the journey we got glimpses of these interminable lengths of humanity, hurled by machinery from everywhere to the frontiers, and almost towing each other.

CHAPTER X

THE WALLS

At daybreak there was a stop, and they said to us, "You're there."

We got out, yawning, our teeth chattering, and grimy with night, on to a platform black-smudged by drizzling rain, in the middle of a sheet of mist which was torn by blasts of distant whistling. Disinterred from the carriages, our shadows heaped themselves there and waited, like bales of goods in the dawn's winter.

Adjutant Marcassin, who had gone in quest of instructions, returned at last. "It's that way."

He formed us in fours. "Forward! Straighten up! Keep step! Look as if you had something about you."

The rhythm of the step pulled at our feet and dovetailed us together. The adjutant marched apart along the little column. Questioned by one of us who knew him intimately, he made no reply. From time to time he threw a quick glance, like the flick of a whip, to make sure that we were in step.

I thought I was going again to the old barracks, where I did my term of service, but I had a sadder disappointment than was reasonable. Across some land where building was going on, deeply trenched, beplastered and soiled with white, we arrived at a new barracks, sinisterly white in a velvet pall of fog. In front of the freshly painted gate there was already a crowd of men like us, clothed in subdued civilian hues in the coppered dust of the first rays of day.

They made us sit on forms round the guard room. We waited there all the day. As the scorching sun went round it forced us to change our places several times. We ate with our knees for tables, and as I undid the little parcels that Marie had made, it seemed to me that I was touching her hands. When the evening had fallen, a passing officer noticed us, made inquiries, and we were mustered. We plunged into the night of the building. Our feet stumbled and climbed helter-skelter, between pitched walls up the steps of a damp staircase, which smelt of stale tobacco and gas-tar, like all barracks. They led us into a dark corridor, pierced by little pale blue windows, where draughts came and went violently, a corridor spotted at each end by naked gas-jets, their flames buffeted and snarling.

A lighted doorway was stoppered by a throng—the store-room. I ended by getting in in my turn, thanks to the pressure of the compact file which followed me, and pushed me like a spiral spring. Some barrack sergeants were exerting themselves authoritatively among piles of new-smelling clothes, of caps and glittering equipment. Geared into the jerky hustle from which we detached ourselves one by one, I made the tour of the place, and came out of it wearing red trousers and carrying my civilian clothes, and a blue coat on my arm; and not daring to put on either my hat or the military cap that I held in my hand.

We have dressed ourselves all alike. I look at the others since I cannot look at myself, and thus I see myself dimly. Gloomily we eat stew, by the miserable illumination of a candle, in the dull desert of the mess room. Then, our mess-tins cleaned, we go down to the great yard, gray and stagnant. Just as we pour out into it, there is the clash of a closing gate and a tightened chain. An armed sentry goes up and down before the gate. It is forbidden to go out under pain of court-martial. To westward, beyond some indistinct land, we see the buried station, reddening and smoking like a factory, and sending out rusty flashes. On the other side is the trench of a street; and in its extended hollow are the bright points of some windows and the radiance of a shop. With my face between the bars of the gate, I look on this reflection of the other life; then I go back to the black staircase, the corridor and the dormitory, I who am something and yet am nothing, like a drop of water in a river.

* * * * * *

We stretch ourselves on straw, in thin blankets. I go to sleep with my head on the bundle of my civilian clothes. In the morning I find myself again and throw off a long dream—all at once impenetrable.